Review - Family secrets prove explosive in ‘Desert'

Published: Thursday, November 7, 2013 at 8:21 a.m.

Last Modified: Thursday, November 7, 2013 at 8:21 a.m.

Exposing family secrets is a dangerous game. Often, they've been kept secret for good reason, and the poor, unwitting soul who drags them hissing and spitting into the light risks creating even more damage instead of achieving her goal of remedying a long-painful situation.

That's pretty much what's going on in "Other Desert Cities" – which is a comedy, by the way, albeit one with significant emotional heft. Jon Robin Baitz's Broadway and off-Broadway hit is getting its local debut at the Red Barn Studio thanks to the Thalian Association, which has taken over the intimate space created by former Wilmington resident Linda Lavin, who appeared in the original "Other Desert Cities" in New York in 2011.

Tom Briggs directs, and he has assembled a formidable cast that does an admirable job of tackling both the play's funny and dramatic moments.

Our setting is Christmas 2004 in the desert, Palm Springs, where Brooke, the liberal daughter of staunch California Republican couple Lyman and Polly Wyeth, has come home for the holidays, joined by her reality-TV-producing younger brother, Trip, and her mother's acerbic, alcoholic sister, Silda, who's only recently begun to dry out. (Lee Lowrimore's set, which represents what's supposed to be an expansive family room and kitchen, does a nice job of making the small space seem larger than it is.)

It's an explosive mix of characters, and while the play's opening minutes can feel brittle and stagey, the action heats up and begins to feel less mannered once the family fireworks kick in, which, come to think of it, is more or less what happens at any gathering of a potentially volatile family.

There are some great lines here. When Polly blames her cantankerousness of the 1990s on a long-festering knee problem, Brooke quips, "What was the reason for it in the ‘70s, Mom?"

Brooke, who's given a world-weary determination by Rachel Lewis Hilburn, is a writer who's finally coming out of a years-long depression thanks in part to having finally finished a long-awaited new book. The part she has trouble telling her parents is that the book is a memoir tackling a dark time in her family's history. It seems her drug-using, radical-cause-adopting older brother, who was also her best friend, committed suicide in the mid-1970s after taking part in a anarchistic bombing that killed a man. It caused a scandal in the media and among Lyman and Polly's conservative friends, and they are not keen on revisiting those painful days.

And that's before they read Brooke's book, which goes into considerable detail and, her parents feel, paints them as uncaring monsters. Afterwards, all bets are off, with hard-nosed Polly (Elizabeth Becka, doing perhaps too much talking with her hands but getting at her character's steely innards) more or less telling Brooke that if she publishes, she's no longer their daughter. When Brooke asks Lyman (Joe Gallison, perfectly cast as an affable, wizened lion), if they'd really kick her out of the family, her dad stares off into space and says, pointedly, "It's amazing how COLD it can get out here in the desert."

Gulp.

As Silda, Suellen Yates has the challenge of playing a part that can't help but make you think of Lavin, since she originated the role and the play is being staged in her old theater. Yates is a skilled performer, however, and she manages to impart comic relief ("You thought there'd be no consequences to telling the truth?" she says to Brooke, eyebrow raised, after her niece expresses dismay at her parents' negative reaction to the book) while hinting at something deeper in Silda's relationship withe Brooke.

The foul-mouthed voice of reason turns out to be the family's youngest member, Trip, who's given an edgy, nice-guy charm by Kevin Wilson. He sees both sides of this fight and therefore can't help but be torn, and Wilson delivers an excellent act two speech in which he implores the two factions to come together. After all, when you're dead and buried, he pleads, "all that matters is how you loved."

Soon after this emotional moment, there's a head-snapping plot twist that not only changes the game but deepens our understanding of the characters and makes them all more sympathetic.

In a way, that's what "Other Desert Cities" is getting at. Being on whatever side of the liberal-conservative divide you're on makes it very easy to judge, but you probably never know as much about other people, even close family, as you think you do.